Flying Turtles Process

I’m not quite sure where it came from. The idea arrived, and delighted me with its silliness. I pretty much followed my usual process on this one: drawing, reference, value studies, color studies, paint. Line Drawing and Value Studies This time I drew on tracing paper and did minimal values with the...

Owl Man Progress Shot

Finding a balance between imagination and realism. After the lay-in (getting a first layer to start setting up value and color relationships) this time I decided to tackle the flesh tones in the face first before developing other areas. I’m trying for a dusk or night time look so...

Real vs. Believable

While in art school I desperately wanted to learn how to make things look real. One of the instructors said to me on several occasions, and I’m paraphrasing here, “is it (the drawing) believable”? Lately this idea has come to the foreground for me and I’m questioning what “believable”...

The Magic Pencil

When starting out many artists hunt for the magic pencil. We read books on what the “masters” used. We ask artists more experienced than us what pencil, brush, plein air box, brand of paint they use. I think this is because we’re looking for the “right way” to make...

Painting Values

This experiment isn’t my idea. It’s based off something Jeff Larson does during his still life painting workshop at The Atelier. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. I watched him do something similar during the workshop demo but wasn’t able to take the hands on portion...

Values First, then Color

I’ve been reading a book recommended to me by Susan Cook, Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing by Margaret Livingstone (a neurophysiologist). In it she addresses many characteristics of human vision and how they relate to art in a very palatable way. Recently, one section really caught my...

Portrait Study – Paint

Last week I posted about how I transfer a drawing to canvas. This week, paint! I’m using oils and decided to use a limited palette. Initially I was going to use Ivory Black for the cools but the flesh was looking dead so I added French Ultramarine Blue. Basically...